✶r e s o u r c e s✶
Here is a collection of some of my favorite websites for inspiration! This is mostly: things I find cool, websites I find myself returning to, and rabbit holes. Hopefully you can find new ideas for projects here!
This is a medieval history website that focuses on medieval cooking and recipes. They also have an amazing database of medieval images (which tend to be lower resolution/like clipart, but that adds to the charm for me). They have a spinoff page called Mythical Plants of the Middle Ages, and a whole page of Fantastic Fish. The website was put together by James A. Matterer. They also have an extensive bookshop with some pretty niche titles.
(sampled from the medieval clipart page)
This is easily one of my favorite, most useful websites. Its a massive database of free polyhedra models. This is where I found my kaleidocycle model. There are so many insanely cool things you could do with this resource. Someone please design an amazing Great Stellated Dodecahedron lamp, could you imagine it as a light fixture? If you're design savy, its pretty easy to clip and scale the printable models which is what I'd recommend. I ususally print out a small tester to get used to the shapes and predict any errors before I make my final model. I also recommend sifting through their visual index, as I found way more variations of the models when I did that. I could also see the simpler designs being really useful if you're a teacher. The website also has different language settings so it's more accessable.
(image sampled from polyhedra.net)
(image sampled from alchemy website)
As the title suggests, this is THE Alchemy website. It is a large, labyrinthine site with many, many rabbit holes you can go down. They have a great search feature which can take you to resources outside of the site. They have transcriptions and interpretations of many texts. I usually use this site to either find an interesting or backing quote for my work, or to find an image. They also have a pretty extensive bookshop resource, who knows what treasures you'll find! Above all, I see the site as an intense labor of love, bringing the study of Alchemy to modern times. The real highlight of the site is all the coursework and the wealth of historical information and cross references. The website was created by Adam Mclean.
This is an online database of high resolution images from old books! It's a great resource for artist and tattooers. My only complaint about the site is that the ads are kind of intense (but you gotta make that bag, and it's a free resource so I get it (and if you read the about section, the author seems super chill and cool)). The images are available for purchase for commercial use, and otherwise free to enjoy! The author of the site goes by Liam.
(image sampled from fromoldbooks.org)
This delightful blog is a great resource for people interested in Medieval literature. The author states her interests are"legends of English saints, medieval churches, and religious poetry in Old and Middle English" , so if you're into that stuff like I am, you should check it out!
(referenced from Plant Lore, Legends and Lyrics by Richard Folkard, Jun.)
This is a Project Gutenberg ebook by Richard Folkard that dives into plant lore. I think this is a great resource because they include historical poems and texts about the plants, and also have a great clipart collection. It's quite esoteric. The book begins with a long list of resources, so there are many more things to investigate! My favorite sections of the book include: the flowers of the saints (which is outlined in a very helpful chart), the poem exerpts for fairy plants, plants of the devil, plants of witches (and also a section on plants antagonistic to witchcraft, which I haven't seen before!), mythical plants, the list of when plants should be harvested according to the planets, and ancient floral vocabulary (the language of flowers!). The last two thirds of the book are a detailed index of select plants. This is an amazing resource for artists (can you imagine the zines you could make with all that??) or just people looking to take some time away from social media and do some self study!.
(referenced from Plant Lore, Legends and Lyrics by Richard Folkard, Jun.)
Luminarium is a site created by Anniina Jokinen. This is a great resource for Medieval literature texts. Pages I found interesting were: Medieval Cosmology, Metaphisical Poets, and Luminarium editions (which is a digital library of medieval texts, poems and plays, could be great for finding inspiring words), and Middle English Lyrics (which was how I found the site). This last section is particularly interesting because it includes audio samples of what the songs would have sounded like.
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The site also has an extensive resources page, where you can find links to Medieval English Dictionary, The Aberdeen Bestiary, a small Illuminated Manuscript page, Medieval shoes (This is a weird messed up old site, but there is an instruction section, as well as a section to help your piece look more "15th century"), Medieval costumes (This site looks mainly geared towards stage and costume design), and many other treasures!
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I hope you enjoy, and create something exciting! I will be adding to this page as I find more interesting things. - Leo :)
